Portuguese phonology

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The phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) can be considerable, both varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.

For finer information on regional accents, see Portuguese dialects, and for historical sound changes see History of Portuguese.

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Consonants

Overview

The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates /ts/, /dz/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/ merged with the fricatives /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, several consonant phonemes have special allophones at syllable boundaries, and a few also undergo allophonic changes at word boundaries. In the following, the phrase "at the end of a syllable" can be understood as "before a consonant, or at the end of a word".

¹ In most of Brazil and Angola, the consonant hereafter denoted as /ɲ/ may be realized as a nasal palatal approximant [j̃] which nasalizes the vowel that precedes it: [ˈnĩj̃u].^[3]

² In a number of Brazilian dialects (such as those of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia), the dental plosives are affricated to [tʃ] and [dʒ] before /i/ and / ĩ/.

³ At the end of syllables, the sibilants /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ occur in complementary distribution.^{[citation needed]} In most of Brazil, they are alveolar: /s/ is used before voiceless consonants or at the end of words, while /z/ is used before voiced consonants: e.g. isto /ˈistu/, turismo /tuˈɾizmu/.^[4] In most of Portugal, and in Rio de Janeiro and some northeastern states of Brazil, syllable-final sibilants have become postalveolar, /ʃ/ before a voiceless consonant or at the end of a word, and /ʒ/ before a voiced consonant: isto /ˈiʃtu/, turismo /tuˈɾiʒmu/.^{[citation needed]}

⁴ The consonant hereafter denoted as /ʁ/ has a variety of realizations depending on dialect. In Brazil, this sound can be velar, uvular, or glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds^[5] though it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [x], a voiceless glottal fricative [h] or voiceless uvular fricative [χ]. In Europe, its most frequent realizations are the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] and the alveolar trill [r].^[6] See also Guttural R in Portuguese.

⁵ The two rhotic phonemes /ʁ/ and /ɾ/ contrast only between vowels.^{[citation needed]} At the beginning of words and after /l/, /n/, /z/, /ʒ/, only the former occurs, while elsewhere most dialects use the latter.^{[citation needed]} However, several Brazilian dialects, including the dialect of Rio de Janeiro, use the former at the end of syllables.^{[citation needed]}

⁶ The consonant /l/ is velarized in European dialects. In most Brazilian dialects, /l/ is vocalized to [ʊ̯] at the end of syllables.^[7] In casual BP, unstressed il can be realized as as [ju], as in fácil [ˈfasju] ('easy').^[8]

Further notes

• Nasal consonants do not normally occur at the end of syllables. Syllable-final /n/ may be present in rare learned words for some speakers.^[9] Word-initial /ɲ/ occurs in very few loanwords.^[10]

• In northern and central Portugal, the voiced plosives /b/, /d/, /g/ may be lenited to fricatives [β], [ð], and [ɣ] respectively, except at the beginning of words, or after nasal vowels.^[11][12]

• In European pronunciations, the postalveolar fricatives are only weakly fricated in the syllable coda.^[13]

Minimal pairs

¹ Spelled with a silent c in the European orthography, and without it in the Brazilian orthography. ² Spelled with a silent c in the European orthography, but in the Brazilian orthography this c is not silent.

Vowels

Monophthongs of Portuguese as they are pronounced in Lisbon, from Cruz-Ferreira (1999)

Oral monophthongs of Portuguese as they are pronounced in São Paulo, from Barbosa & Albano (2004:229)

Portuguese has one of the richest vowel phonologies of all Romance languages, with seven (in Brazil) to nine (in Portugal) oral vowels, five nasal vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. The high vowels /e o/ and the low vowels /ɛ ɔ/ are four separate phonemes, unlike in Spanish, and the contrast between them is used for vowel alternation. European Portuguese has also two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided like the e caduc of French.
Like standard Catalan, Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables; the vowels /a ɛ e ɔ o/ tend to be raised to [ɐ e i ɨ o u] (although [ɨ] occurs only in EP) when they are unstressed. The dialects of Portugal are characterized by reducing vowels to a greater extent than others. Falling diphthongs are composed of a vowel followed by one of the high vowels /i/ or /u/; although rising diphthongs occur in the language as well, they can be interpreted as hiatuses.

The exact realization of the /ɐ/ varies somewhat amongst dialects. In Portugal, it is pronounced higher than in Brazil, approaching the mid central unrounded vowel [ə] (see charts to the left).

In Brazil, [a] and [ɐ] occur in complementary distribution: [ɐ] occurs in final unstressed syllables and in stressed syllables before one of the nasal consonants /m/, /n/, or /ɲ/ followed by another vowel, and [a] elsewhere.^{[citation needed]} In European Portuguese, the general situation is similar (with [ɐ] being more prevalent in unstressed syllables), except that for some regions there are minimal pairs for the two vowels.^{[citation needed]} Many are composed of a stressed word and an unstressed clitic, such as dá "he gives" and da "of the". Others are verb forms of the first conjugation such as pensamos "we think" and pensámos "we thought" (pensamos in Brazil).

Close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels (/e ~ ɛ/ and /o ~ ɔ/) contrast only when they are stressed.^[14] In unstressed syllables, they occur in complementary distribution. In Brazilian Portuguese, they are raised to a high vowel ([i] and [u] respectively) after a stressed syllable.^[15]

European Portuguese possess a Near-close near-back unrounded vowel. It occurs in unstressed syllables such as in pegar [pɯˈgaɾ] ('to grip').^[16] There is no standard symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this sound. The IPA Handbook transcribes it as /ɯ̽/, but in Portuguese studies /ɨ/ or /ə/ are traditionally used. There are very few minimal pairs with /e ~ ɛ/ (except for monosyllabic clitics) and in relaxed pronunciation, it is often elided.^{[citation needed]}

Oral diphthongs

Diphthongs are not considered independent phonemes in Portuguese, but knowing them can help with spelling and pronunciation. Only falling diphthongs are listed below. Although rising diphthongs are frequent in the language as well, especially those composed of semivowel allophone of /i/ or /u/ followed by another vowel, they can be analysed as hiatuses.^{[citation needed]}

The characteristic pronunciation of /l/ as [u̯] at the end of syllables in Brazilian Portuguese has created new diphthongs: [ou̯] (polvo, "octopus"), [ɔu̯] (sol, "sun"), [uu̯] (sul, "south"), although this semivowel [u̯] is best analysed as an allophone of the consonant /l/.

Nasal vowels

Portuguese also has a series of nasalized vowels. Cruz-Ferreira (1995) analyzes European Portuguese with five monophthongs and four diphthongs, all phonemic: /ĩ ẽ ɐ̃ õ ũ ɐ̃ĩ õĩ ũĩ ɐ̃ũ/. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the end of words (or followed by a final sibilant), and in a few compounds. Brazilian Portuguese is considerably more nasal than European Portuguese possibly due to the influence of other languages, such as Tupi.^{[citation needed]}

Barbosa & Albano (2004) analyze the nasalized monophthongs of Brazilian Portuguese as phonetically nasalized before an archiphoneme /N/ or a heterosyllabic nasal consonant. Nasalized diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese, are formed by combining [ẽ], [ɐ̃], [õ], or [ũ] with the offglide [ɪ̯̃] (except with/ɐ̃ʊ̃/).^[20]

The nasal diphthong [ũĩ] is found only in the six words ruim (in some dialects, though this pronunciation is nonstandard), muito, muita, muitos, muitas, and mui.^{[citation needed]}

Vowel alternation

The stressed low vowels /a, ɛ, ɔ/ contrast with the stressed high vowels /ɐ, e, o/ in several kinds of grammatically meaningful alternation:

• Between the base form of a noun or adjective and its inflected forms: ovo /o/ "egg", ovos /ɔ/ "eggs"; novo /o/, nova /ɔ/, novos /ɔ/, novas /ɔ/ "new" (masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, feminine plural);
• Between some nouns or adjectives and related verb forms: adj. seco /e/ "dry", v. seco /ɛ/ "I dry"; n. gosto /o/ "taste", v. gosto /ɔ/ "I like";
• In regular verbs, the stressed vowel is normally low /a, ɛ, ɔ/, but high /ɐ, e, o/ before the nasal consonants /m/, /n/, /ɲ/ (the high vowels are also nasalized, in BP);
• Some stem-changing verbs alternate stressed high vowels with stressed low vowels in the present tense, according to a regular pattern: cedo, cedes, cede, cedem /e-ɛ-ɛ-ɛ/; movo, moves, move, movem /o-ɔ-ɔ-ɔ/ (present indicative); ceda, cedas, ceda, cedam /e/; mova, movas, mova, movam /o/ (present subjunctive). (There is another class of stem-changing verbs which alternate /i, u/ with /ɛ, ɔ/ according to the same scheme);
• In central Portugal, the 1st. person plural of verbs of the 1st. conjugation (with infinitives in -ar) has the stressed vowel /ɐ/ in the present indicative, but /a/ in the preterite, cf. pensamos "we think" with pensámos "we thought". In BP, the stressed vowel is /ɐ̃/ in both, so they are written without accent mark.

There are also pairs of unrelated words that differ in the height of these vowels, such as besta /e/ "beast" and besta /ɛ/ "crossbow", or este /e/ "this one" and este /ɛ/ "east". Since most polysyllabic homographs of this sort can be distinguished from context, the orthography does not differentiate them.

In EP, there are several minimal pairs in which a clitic containing the vowel /ɐ/ contrasts with a monosyllabic stressed word containing /a/: da vs. dá, mas vs. más, a vs. à /a/, etc. In BP, however, these words are all pronounced with /a/.

Unstressed vowels

Some isolated vowels (meaning, those that are neither nasal, nor part of a diphthong) tend to change quality when they become unstressed in a fairly predictable way. In the examples below, the stressed syllable of each word is in boldface. The term "final" should be interpreted here as "at the end of a word, or before word final -s".

With a few exceptions mentioned in the previous sections, the vowels /a/ and /ɐ/ occur in complementary distribution when stressed, the latter before nasal consonants followed by a vowel, and the former elsewhere.

In Brazilian Portuguese, the general pattern is that the stressed vowels /a, ɐ/, /e, ɛ/, /o, ɔ/ neutralize to /a/, /e/, /o/, respectively, in unstressed syllables, as is common in Romance languages. In final unstressed syllables, however, they are raised to /ɐ/, /i/, /u/. In casual BP, /e, ɛ/, /o, ɔ/ may be raised to /i/, /u/ on any unstressed syllable.^[21]

European Portuguese has taken this process one step further, raising /a, ɐ/, /e, ɛ/, /o, ɔ/ to /ɐ/, /ɨ/, /u/ in all unstressed syllables. The vowels /ɐ/ and /ɨ/ are also more centralized than their Brazilian counterparts. The three unstressed vowels /ɐ, ɨ, u/ are reduced and often voiceless, and in some cases elided in fast speech.

There are some exceptions to the rules above. For example, /i/ occurs instead of unstressed /e/ or /ɨ/, before another vowel in hiatus (teatro, reúne, peão). Also, /a/, /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ appear in some unstressed syllables, in EP. And there is some dialectal variation in the unstressed sounds: the northern accents of BP have low vowels in unstressed syllables, /ɛ, ɔ/, instead of the high vowels /e, o/. However, the Brazilian media tend to prefer the southern pronunciation. In any event, the general paradigm is a useful guide for pronunciation and spelling.

Nasal vowels, vowels that belong to falling diphthongs, and the high vowels /i/ and /u/, are not affected by this process, nor is the vowel /o/ when written as the digraph ou.

Epenthesis

In BP, an epenthetic vowel [i] is sometimes inserted between consonants, to break up consonant clusters that are not native to Portuguese, in learned words. For example, psicologia "psychology" may be pronounced [pisikoloˈʒiɐ] (the letter p is not silent, as it is in English), and adverso "adverse" may be pronounced [adʒiˈvɛɾsu]. In northern Portugal, an epenthetic [ɨ] may be used instead, [pɨsikuluˈʒiɐ], [ɐðɨˈβɛɾsu], but in southern Portugal there is often no epenthesis, [psikuluˈʒiɐ], [ɐdˈvɛɾsu].

Further notes on the oral vowels

• Some words with /ɛ ɔ/ in EP have /e o/ in BP. This happens when those vowels are stressed before the nasal consonants /m/, /n/, followed by another vowel, in which case both types of vowel may occur in European Portuguese, but Brazilian Portuguese only allows high vowels. This can affect spelling: cf. EP tónico, BP tônico "tonic".
• In BP, stressed vowels have nasal allophones, [ɐ̃], [ẽ], etc. (see below) before one of the nasal consonants /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, followed by another vowel. In EP, nasalization is nearly absent in this environment.
• Some BP speakers also diphthongize stressed vowels to [ai̯], [ɛi̯], [ei̯], etc. (except /i/), before a sibilant at the end of a syllable (written s, x, or z). For instance, Jesus [ʒeˈzui̯s] "Jesus", faz [fai̯s] "he does", dez [dɛi̯s] "ten". This has led to the use of meia (meaning "meia dúzia", or "half a dozen") for seis [sei̯s] "six" when making enumerations, to avoid any confusion with três [tɾei̯s] "three" on the telephone.^[22]
• In Lisbon and surrounding areas, stressed /e/ is pronounced as [ɐ] or [ɐi] when it comes before a palatal consonant /ʎ/, /ɲ/ or a palato-alveolar /ʃ/, /ʒ/, followed by another vowel.

Sandhi

When two words belonging to the same phrase are pronounced together, or two morphemes are joined in a word, the last sound in the first may be affected by the first sound of the next (sandhi), either coalescing with it, or becoming shorter (a semivowel), or being deleted. This affects especially the sibilant consonants /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and the unstressed final vowels /ɐ/, /i, ɨ/, /u/.

Consonants

As was mentioned above, the dialects of Portuguese can be divided into two groups, according to whether syllable-final sibilants are pronounced as alveolar /s/, /z/, or as postalveolar consonants /ʃ/, /ʒ/. At the end of words, the default pronunciation for a sibilant is voiceless, /s, ʃ/, but in connected speech the sibilant is treated as though it were within a word (assimilation):

• If the next word begins with a voiceless consonant, the final sibilant remains voiceless /s, ʃ/; bons tempos [bõs ˈtẽpus] or [bõʃ ˈtẽpuʃ] "good times".
• If the next word begins with a voiced consonant, the final sibilant becomes voiced as well /z, ʒ/; bons dias [bõz ˈdʒiɐs] or [bõʒ ˈdiɐʃ] "good day".
• If the next word begins with a vowel, the final sibilant is treated as intervocalic, and pronounced /z/; bons amigos [bõz aˈmigus] or [bõz ɐˈmiguʃ] "good friends".

When two identical sibilants appear in sequence within a word, they reduce to a single consonant. For example, nascer, desço, excesso, exsudar are pronounced with [s] by speakers who use alveolar sibilants at the end of syllables, and disjuntor is pronounced with [ʒ] by speakers who use postalveolars. But if the two sibilants are different they are pronounced separately. Thus, the former speakers will pronounce the last example with [zʒ], and the latter speakers will pronounce the first examples with [ʃs] (although in relaxed pronunciation the first sibilant in each pair may be dropped). This applies also to words that are pronounced together in connected speech:

• sibilant + /s/, e.g. as sopas: either [s] or [ʃs];
• sibilant + /z/, e.g. as zonas: either [z] or [ʒz];
• sibilant + /ʃ/, e.g. as chaves: either [sʃ] or [ʃ];
• sibilant + /ʒ/, e.g. os genes: either [zʒ] or [ʒ].

Vowels

Normally, only the three vowels /ɐ/, /i/ (in BP) or /ɨ/ (in EP), and /u/ occur in unstressed final position. If the next word begins with a similar vowel, they merge with it in connected speech, producing a single vowel, possibly long (crasis). Here, "similar" means that nasalization can be disregarded, and that the two central vowels /a, ɐ/ can be identified with each other. Thus,

• /a, ɐ/ + /a, ɐ/ → [a(ː)]; toda a noite [ˈtoda(ː) ˈnoi̯tʃi] or [ˈtoda(ː) ˈnoi̯tɨ] "all night", nessa altura [ˈnɛs au̯ˈtuɾɐ] or [ˈnɛs aɫˈtuɾɐ] "at that point".
• /a, ɐ/ + /ɐ̃/ → [ã(ː)] (note that this low nasal vowel appears only in this situation); a antiga "the ancient one" and à antiga "in the ancient way", both pronounced [ã(ː)ˈtʃigɐ] or [ã(ː)ˈtigɐ].
• /i/ + /i, ĩ/ → [i(ː), ĩ(ː)]; de idade [dʒi(ː)ˈdadʒi] or [di(ː)ˈdadɨ] "aged".
• /ɨ/ + /ɨ/ → [ɨ]; fila de espera [ˈfilɐ dɨʃˈpɛɾɐ] "waiting line" (EP only).
• /u/ + /u, ũ/ → [u(ː), ũ(ː)]; todo o dia [ˈtodu(ː) ˈdʒiɐ] or [ˈtodu(ː) ˈdiɐ] "all day".

If the next word begins with a dissimilar vowel, then /i/ and /u/ become approximants in Brazilian Portuguese (synaeresis):

• /i/ + V → [jV]; durante o curso [duˈɾɐ̃tʃj u ˈkuɾsu] "during the course", mais que um [mai̯s kj ũ] "more than one".
• /u/ + V → [wV]; todo este tempo [ˈtodw ˈestʃi ˈtẽpu] "all this time" do objeto [dw obiˈʒɛtu] "of the object".

In careful speech and in with certain function words, or in some phrase stress conditions (see Mateus and d'Andrade, for details), European Portuguese has a similar process:

• /ɨ/ + V → [jV]; se a vires [sj ɐ ˈviɾɨʃ] "if you see her", mais que um [mai̯ʃ kj ũ] "more than one".
• /u/ + V → [wV]; todo este tempo [ˈtodw ˈeʃtɨ ˈtẽpu] "all this time", do objecto [dw ɔbˈʒɛtu] "of the object".

But in other prosodic conditions, and in relaxed pronunciation, EP simply drops final unstressed /ɨ/ and /u/ (elision):

• /ɨ/ + V → [V]; durante o curso [duˈɾɐ̃t u ˈkuɾsu] "during the course", este inquilino [ˈeʃt ĩkɨˈlinu] "this tenant".
• /u/ + V → [V]; todo este tempo [tod ˈeʃtɨ ˈtẽpu] "all this time", disto há muito [diʃt a ˈmũi̯tu] "there's a lot of this".

Unlike French, for example, Portuguese does not indicate most of these sound changes explicitly in its orthography.

Stress

Primary stress may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but mostly on the last two. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a close vowel. The orthography of Portuguese takes advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics.

Because of the phonetic changes that often affect unstressed vowels, pure lexical stress is less common in Portuguese than in related languages, but there is still a significant number of examples of it:

dúvida /ˈduvidɐ/ "doubt" (noun) vs. duvida /duˈvidɐ/ "he doubts"

falaram /faˈlaɾɐ̃ũ/ "they spoke" vs. falarão /falaˈɾɐ̃ũ/ "they will speak" (Brazilian pronunciation)

ouve /ˈovi/ "he hears" vs. ouvi /oˈvi/ "I heard" (Brazilian pronunciation)

túnel /ˈtunɛl/ "tunnel" vs. tonel /tuˈnɛl/ "wine cask" (European pronunciation)

Prosody

Tone is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level tone are important. There are of six dynamic tone patterns that affect entire phrases, which indicate the mood and intention of the speaker such as implication, emphasis, reservation, etc.^{[citation needed]} As in most Romance languages, interrogation is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence.

See also

• Differences between Spanish and Portuguese
• History of Portuguese
• Portuguese orthography, for further information on spelling
• Portuguese dialects
• Portuguese alphabet

References

Bibliography

• Barbosa, Plínio A.; Albano, Eleonora C. (2004), "Brazilian Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 227-232 
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90-94 
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1999), "Portuguese (European)", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association:A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge University Press, pp. 126-130, ISBN 0-521-63751-1 
• Major, Roy C. (1992), "Stress and Rhythm in Brazilian Portuguese", in Koike, Dale April; Macedo, Donaldo P, Romance Linguistics: The Portuguese Context, Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, ISBN 0897892976 
• Mateus, Maria Helena; d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000), The Phonology of Portuguese, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-823581-X 
• Thomas, Earl W. (1974), A Grammar of Spoken Brazilian Portuguese, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, ISBN 082651197X 
• Vázquez Cuesta, Mendes da Luz, (1987) Gramática portuguesa, 3rd. ed. ISBN 84-249-1117-2

External links

• Omniglot's page on Portuguese Includes a recording of the phonemes and diphthongs (Brazilian Portuguese).
• The pronunciation of the Portuguese of Portugal
• Phoneme summary, with samples
• Instituto Camões — A Pronúncia do Português Europeu
• The Phonology of Portuguese (excerpt)